Category Announcements

Saudi Jeans Turns Six

I celebrate the sixth anniversary of Saudi Jeans today. The blog that I started just for fun has claimed a life of its own, and has in many ways become central to my own life. It has been a great journey. Like a roller coaster, full of ups and downs, turns and twists, joy and fear. Sometimes fast, sometimes slow. Sometimes nice, sometimes nasty. But always, always interesting.

Some argue that although I say the goal of this blog is to push for change in Saudi Arabia, little has changed in the country and this little has nothing to do with Saudi Jeans or blogging. That could be true, and I’m okay with it. Changing a nation is too great of an endeavour for a humble blog like mine to meet. But for me the question is not if blogging has changed (or can change) Saudi Arabia or not. The question I keep asking myself is: is it wroth trying? And my answer is absolutely yes.

I know that I aim too high. That’s just me. I can’t settle for less, I want everything. I’m greedy like that, but I don’t accept injustice and I believe that we, as people, deserve better. My dreams are big and wild, but I will never suppress them. You can share those dreams, or laugh at them, but you can’t stop me, and you can’t shut me up.

What the future holds for Saudi Jeans? I don’t know, to be honest. After I wrote this blogpost on new year’s eve, some readers had the impression that I was laying the ground to announce later the end of the blog. It certainly wasn’t the case. Saudi Jeans will be around for at least one more year. There is a big chance I might leave the country in the coming few weeks. I will be away from KSA for a while, and I’m still unsure what is that going to mean for Saudi Jeans. I, however, plan to continue blogging from abroad.

Allow me in the end to express my gratitude to my family and friends for I’m nothing without them, and thank you readers for giving me some of your attention over these years.

The kid in the video is my little brother Mohammed. I took this video about two weeks ago in an amusement park here in Hofuf, east of Saudi Arabia.

Prayers for Carol

It is with great sadness that I share with you that my friend and fellow blogger Carol Fleming, aka American Bedu, has suffered the loss of her beloved husband Abdullah al-Ajroush after a long struggle with lukemia. I met Abdullah at his house in Riyadh a few years ago and he was very kind and warm. He was a real gentelman. May he rests in peace.

Carol will contniue her own battle with cancer, as she still has about two months left of her own treatment program. Please keep her in your prayers.

Back (to basics)

The past few weeks were difficult, but I’m glad they are over and behind me now. As you can see, I return with a new design (if you follow the blog using a feeds reader you may want to visit the site to check it out). The redesign is based on Sandbox, and it’s a throwback to the minimalism that inspired the look of Saudi Jeans in its first two years.

Longtime readers probably remember when I used to post a bunch of links to all kinds of stuff everyday. I kept doing something like this through the “shared items” on the right sidebar, but it was not exactly the same. As an experiment, I’m reintroducing the daily links in the main column of the blog with occasional context and/or commentary. However, these linky posts will not be open to comments initially. Based on how the experiment goes, this may or may not continue to be the case.

I’m mostly satisfied with the new design but it’s still kind of rough around the edges, so if you run into anything funny please let me know.

Lull

It’s been almost a year since I took a break, so I think it’s about time to take some time off. This would be longer than usual, but I’m afraid it’s necessary and much needed. There will be no blogging for the rest of the month, but I shall be back in February with new content and probably a new design too.